CHAPTER 9
Lack of Sleep is Making You Fat
Sleep seems such an easy thing to do. It takes absolutely no effort at all. You simply get comfortable, close you eyes and drift off to slumberland. The very simplicity and lack of perceived effort involved in going to sleep is what makes it difficult for most of us to take the idea of sleep as the key to wellness and weight loss seriously. After all, we’ve been fed on the notion that vigorous activity – the very antithesis of sleep – is they key to shedding those unwanted kilos and feeling vital. By coupling regular exercise with a controlled, clean eating pattern, we’ve been told over and over again, we will be able to reach our fat loss goals and a feeling of wellness. The problem, of course, is that millions of us have been doing just that and carrying excess weight and feeling constantly tired. The missing component, the key to unlocking the fat burning mechanism and increased energy, is very likely to be sleep.
Consider this: the obesity epidemic has run parallel with an invention that has had a profound effect on our sleep patterns; artificial light. The light bulb has been around for less than a century. Prior to that there really was no artificial light. When the sun went down there wasn’t much to do. Remember we didn’t have YouTube, Facebook or Twitter back then. As a result, we went to bed and drifted off to sleep. But today, artificial light has thrown our sleep patterns completely out of whack. In the western world we are, in fact, no longer sleeping for one third of our lives. That fraction has been revised down to one quarter. That is a massive reduction in sleep and it has been paralleled by a huge increase in body fat and exhaustion.
Sleeping can therefore affect your weight control goals and the issue boils down to two things:
The quality and the quantity of your sleep.
These two factors, sleep quality and quantity, regulate the release of certain hormones which researchers have been taking a lot of interest in lately. They’ve known for a long time that sleep disruption affects our hormones but new research has honed in on 3 hormones in particular which affect our appetite. Those hormones are leptin, grehlin and cortisol.
Spotlight on Leptin
Leptin can be seen as the conductor of your body’s orchestra. When all the instruments are harmonious and synchronised, beautiful music results. Similarly, when your Leptin levels are healthy, your body is humming along, you feel great and you are able to effectively control your eating. Leptin is a master hormone that regulates the hundreds of trillions of cells in your body. It does it by synchronising the functions in your body.
Leptin has as one of its regulatory actions, control of hormones that sets the tone for a good night’s sleep. It controls the release of the sleep hormone melatonin, regulates growth hormone and thyroid. It also synchronises sex hormone release. All of these things combine to produce a good night’s sleep.
In 1995, researchers at Rockefeller University in the United States discovered a gene in fat cells (the body cells where fat-triglycerides are stored) that directs the production of leptin (the word is Greek and means thin). Among all of its other duties of oversight, leptin has the critical job of controlling hunger and feelings of fullness. It does this by telling your body how much fat you have stored and, therefore, how much more food you need to provide the energy to fuel your day and leptin also reduces the hypothalamus’s secretion of NPY, the hormone that signals hunger. When the Rockefeller researchers injected leptin into specially bred fat mice, the mice ate less, burned food faster and lost significant amounts of weight.
From studies like this, researchers have determined that leptin is the gate-keeper of fat metabolism and the regulator of hunger. There are 3 ways that it does so:
If your body’s fat cells are producing a healthy amount of leptin, the hormone will signal your body to eat less and you will be more able to control your weight. Many people who are overweight are producing enough leptin because leptin is produced in fat cells. The problem, however, is that the hypothalamus in the brain is not getting the message from the leptin hormones to burn fat for energy. This will force the body to burn sugar rather than fat for energy. Without this appetite regulator working optimally, we will also be very likely to eat more. Leptin resistance in the body is taken by our system as a sign of starvation. In turn, certain mechanisms in the body swing into action to increase your fat stores. The upshot of all of this is that a less than optimum level of leptin release will make us eat more and at the same time make our body think that we are starving, thus telling us to eat even more.
Now, there are a number of factors that contribute to leptin resistance. They include such things as eating too many simple carbohydrates, high stress levels, high fructose and grain consumption and – you guessed it – lack of sleep. When you don’t get enough sleep, your leptin levels are negatively affected. The result is that you don’t feel as full as you should after you eat, which leads to binge eating and snacking; two major fat gain culprits.
The impact of lack of sleep on leptin and weight gain were clearly shown in a couple of studies, one conducted at the University of Chicago in Illinois and the other at Stanford University in California. In the first study, 12 men were deprived of sleep for 2 days, followed by 2 days of extra sleep. Leptin levels were taken before and after each sleep period. During the restricted sleep period, the men’s leptin levels dropped significantly. In concert with this, their desire for high carbohydrate, high calories foods increased by a whopping 45% over their desire after the extended sleep period.
The second study involved 1,000 volunteers who recorded their sleeping patterns before having their leptin levels recorded. The results showed that respondents who got less than an average of 8 hours of sleep per night had lowered levels of leptin AND higher body fat levels.
Leptin resistance, which is your brain’s inability to read the messages that leptin is sending it, coupled with diminished levels of leptin in your body, leads to weight loss resistance. That means that you will have an inability to lose weight despite how cleanly you eat and how much you exercise. It is this inability to burn fat that is keeping millions of people overweight.
Spotlight on Grehlin
Grehlin is a hormone that is made in the stomach. When grehlin is made in our stomach and pumped into our system we tend to eat more. Grehlin is responsible for all those times that we reach for a snack or junk food when we know that we’re not really hungry. That’s because grehlin is one of the hormones in our body that tells us that we are hungry. The two studies mentioned above that showed how lack of sleep decreased leptin levels also revealed that sleep deprivation increases the levels of grehlin. In fact, in order to control your grehlin levels, it is absolutely vital that you sleep for at least 7 to 8 hours each night.
Enhanced grehlin levels in your body don’t just make you hungry, they also slow down your metabolism as well as decrease the body’s ability to burn fat.
Spotlight on Cortisol
Cortisol is a hormone produced by the adrenal gland in response to stress. The hypothalamus in the brain instructs the adrenal glands to secrete both cortisol and adrenaline when we are under stress. This occurs as a part of the body’s fight or flight response to a stressful situation. The adrenaline puts in a heightened state of readiness to ward off the perceived threat while the cortisol makes the body more effective at producing glucose from proteins. It also increases the body’s temperature.
These systems worked well at times in centuries past when we faced irregular periods of stress that needed an immediate, short-lived response, such as fighting off a wild animal. With the frenetic pace of our modern living, however, too many people are in a constant state of stress. As a result, we are constantly releasing too much cortisol into a system that is already overloaded with the stuff. One effect of having too much cortisol in our body is that extra glucose production is stimulated. Typically, the excess glucose is converted to fat, which ends up being stored in the body.
Another unexplained effect of excess cortisol on the body is that it causes the accumulation of fat in the abdominal area. This is one of the most dangerous areas of the body to store fat as it can be a contributor to metabolic syndrome, diabetes and heart disease.
So turn your smart phones, Ipads and laptops off and sleep your way to wellness and correct your body weight at the same time. 8 hours to increased wellness and health!
Tips on Sleeping More Soundly…And Getting To Sleep
Create a ceremony around sleep time. I burn oils and use warm wheat bags on my tummy. A cup of lemon balm or chamomile tea can help too. Listening to a meditation at the end of the night can always help to stop the racing thoughts of the day. Keep a booklet and write down what needs to be done the next day so that you can trust your list will be on paper and not forgotten in the morning. Read an inspirational book. Whatever helps calm the mind (it’s individual to each person)…do that!
OTHERWISE…you can visit your local naturopath, including me, who can assist you with different nutrients or herbal tonics traditionally used to calm the nervous system, help you establish a sleep pattern and have the rest that your body needs. I always say that the more you sleep…the more you sleep…and stay asleep.
Sweet dreams to you all…